1) According to Cosmic Consciousness, something that I believe to be about right, awakening tends to happen at about age 35. Extended lifespans should have little effect on increasing proportion of those you ‘achieve’ enlightenment.
2 thru 5) Leisure is usually NOT an aid to enlightenment. Suffering and insight into the nature of suffering is more of a spur. I think that ‘adequate’ access to the means and modes of ’spiritual advance’ is enough and that an abundance of information and teachers adds little.
6) I think that people have long had their ‘glimpses’. I think it is helpful, on one level, that we better know what others are experiencing, but it is also very unhelpful that people are more prone to faux experiences — imagining themselves enlightened — and this becomes a sticking point, if not quicksand, that blocks them from ‘getting further along’ in their spiritual joyride.

But, mostly, I think things remain the same regarding enlightenment in society, generally. There remains both an abundance of possibilities offset by an abundance of distractions.

1. Longer lifespan, as Duff mentions.
2. Easier access to simple, effective practices from a range of traditions.
3. Easier access to teachers, in person and through books, audio, video, internet.
4. For some, more leisure time so more time for practice.
5. More today than earlier, a disenchantment with materialistic life through having it all and seeing that it doesn’t quite do it.
6. Different definitions of awakening. If we take a broad (or vague) definition to awakening, as many do, then many has indeed awakened… but this may include people who have a soul level awakening (alive presence), a oneness awakening (a self here one with God and everything else), glimpses of soul/oneness/nondual awakenings, and also a more stable nondual awakening (free from an I with an Other). Even among many “awakened” teachers today, we see people who express these different forms of awakening.

I mean, sure, in 1972, say, [35 years ago] high school students brought slide rules with them to their math classes and had nothing more powerful electronically on them than a light on their keychain. But, I would contest that, despite “future shock,” which was the term used at the time to refer to heady expected advances in science and society, that if you went back to that time, Vince, it would feel remarkably similar to the current day. There would be fewer TV stations, the music would be crappier [if that's possible], a lot of ’surface’ things would be different [exotic, really], treatment of certain classes of people would be shocking, but the people would be just as diabolically ignorant/amazing stupid/dazzling fresh/rancid as people are today. You would find it all strangly familiar. Using a term of that time, you might say it is “cool.”

Actually, at that time people were more heavily engaged in saving the world and many were much more idealistic than the twentysomethings of today. Looking back at it, all the tie-dyed shirts and long sideburns and color might seem moronic, but, hey, 35 years from now, there’s a lot that’s culturally accepted NOW that in a later time will be dismissed as quaint.

In 2042, someone will walk into a 3D virtual secondhand clothing store, grab a shirt off a simulated hanger, see that it says “Buddhist Geeks” in the spelling of English in the early part of the century, and approvingly call the antique “It is sooo Clintonian!! It’s cool!!”

Only in the past 100 years have people lived significantly longer than age 40, so it makes sense that people now have more time to develop and pursue spirituality.